


sunflower

by khowardishere (esoterpsi)



Series: the six hanahaki au nobody asked for [1]
Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, TOO MANY COMMAS, They’re lesbians Harold, anne literally coughs up sunflowers, not historically accurate, the reincarnation aspect is surprisingly not the most important part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esoterpsi/pseuds/khowardishere
Summary: Anne is 17 when she meets Catalina, the pretty student who just moved to the UK from Spain.Anne is also 17 when she begins to cough up yellow petals.
Relationships: Catherine of Aragon/Anne Boleyn
Series: the six hanahaki au nobody asked for [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773784
Comments: 7
Kudos: 146





	sunflower

Anne is 17 when she meets Catalina, the pretty student who just moved to the UK from Spain. Catalina who doesn’t seem to recognise her, even though Anne is well aware they have met before. Maybe it’s for the best, she thinks, as Cat smiles and shakes her hand in a way she never would have back then, and they settle into a close friendship.

Anne is also 17 when she begins to cough up yellow petals. She dry-heaves for half an hour before they finally eject themselves into her bathroom sink, all four of them, and she has to bite back a groan because of course they would be sunflowers again.

It was sunflowers last time too.

She knows what this means, of course. She hadn’t understood the first time, but times are a lot different now. Society has progressed enough that she knows why she feels almost giddy to be around the girl who has become her fast friend, why both the thought of being with her and being without her physically hurts. She also knows what the flowers mean.

Last time, she hadn’t understood why she felt that way, and why the flowers came when she joined the court of one Catherine of Aragon, when she met the queen. Then, Cat had shook her hand curtly and she had felt something take root in her lungs. Every time she had had to speak to Catherine, or touch her (and as her lady-in-waiting Anne had to do this a lot) that something grew, encompassing everything inside her until finally the petals came up. She had gone to a doctor, of course she had, who had scrutinised her and refused to tell her anything about what was wrong with her. But it was bearable as long as she was with the queen; she would bear the pain just for a chance to see her. And then Catherine was gone and she’d been queen and it had gotten so much worse.

Henry - and she grimaces just recollecting his name - had caught her on the floor days after their wedding, panting and coughing, a bloodied whole sunflower on the stone ground before her. He had yelled at her about being unfaithful because even then he didn’t believe she truly loved him, demanded to know which man she was cheating with, and so soon after their wedding. Anne had cried, insisted she had no idea what he was talking about, and looking back on it that was probably the start of their marital problems.

When Catherine died it was obvious Anne wasn’t far behind. Sure, she followed Henry in mocking his ex-wife, but she was weak on her feet and constantly coughed into a handkerchief. It was rumoured that she was suffering a terrible illness, but the court never found out what during her life. She didn’t let them.

She obviously wasn’t there to witness this, but it was a well-recorded fact that when Anne Boleyn was beheaded there was practically a bouquet of sunflowers wrapped around her oesophagus, sprouting even when her head was separated from her shoulders.

When she came back, centuries later, to this earth, Anne hoped it was over.  
Clearly, her hopes were in vain.

The day Catherine arrived, Anne gave a polite smile and promised to show her around, and then locked herself in the bathroom and cried, because she’d thought this time it would be different. 

(But it’s never ever different.)

Still, against all odds (and her own judgement - maybe she was some kind of masochist, with how much she seemed to enjoy hurting herself) Anne and Cat became close - best even - friends. 

Clearly not more. 

It was a bit of an insult, Anne thinks one day when the petals began to grow in number (Cat had excitedly rung her to gush about a boy she was talking to) to be told by the universe that whatever you look like, whatever situation you’re in, the person you love will never love you back. Although, that’s nothing new at this point. So she coughs the petals up into her bin, cries for a while and then wipes her eyes, stands up and reapplies her eyeliner. It’s clearly not well enough because when Cat comes over like she said she would in her call she immediately catches on, her eyebrows furrowing into a concerned look and Anne has to fight off another cough because how can you look that pretty even when you’re worried?

And it gets worse. Of course it gets worse. The more time she spends with Cat, the more casual affection the taller girl gives her without a second thought because “We’re friends, Annie!”, the more Anne feels like she’s dying. 

She probably is, with the amount of fucking sunflowers taking root in one of her vital organs.

Time passes. A year, in fact, until the summer after Anne and Cat’s A-Levels is coming to an end. Cat had been gone most of the summer, visiting family in Spain, and while Anne had had a short reprieve from the rapid growth of her flowers, the withdrawal from the dangerous high she got around Cat was almost worse. It almost made her forget that she’d made a vital mistake in going to the same university, but how could she not?

Cat might be killing her, but Anne would march to her death with a smile. 

Of course Cat insisted on the two sharing a room, for the same reason she insisted on hugging Anne every time they met and the same reason she had no qualms with saying the nicest things about her even as Anne flushed and flinched seconds later. 

Anne didn’t think she was going to survive the next few years. 

In fact, she knew she wasn’t. 

Oh well, she will deal with that when it happens. 

(A dangerous policy, but she couldn’t do anything else. She wouldn’t deny Cat, not when she was everything to her.)

At uni, the two make an odd pair. Catalina, sunshine personified with a nasty temper should you get on her wrong side, and Anne, laid-back but ice cold. Cat, the almost blindingly bright teaching student (she had been good with kids even back then) and Anne the much less enthusiastic theatre student. 

Some people assume they were a couple. Anne lets herself enjoy that thought for the few seconds it takes until Cat, never offended, corrects them with a smile. Because “Oh no, she's just my best friend!” shouldn’t hurt this much, but it does. 

Hiding the sunflowers when they share a room shouldn’t be as easy as it is, but Cat is a social butterfly and Anne is more introverted than anyone gives her credit for as a performer. She just makes sure to take the rubbish out much more often than she needs to, learns (although not with some raised eyebrows) from a classmate how to get blood out of the cheap accommodation carpet, and maintains the guise she’s had for years - she’s just a sickly person. She isn’t, but Cat has never questioned it. 

Sometimes, she steals things from Cat. Nothing she’d miss or of value, but a worn t-shirt, some lipstick. She doesn’t think Cat knows, but she doesn’t mind anyway. Cat has always encouraged sharing. Anne knows she has at least three of her too-big hoodies in her wardrobe, the dull green standing out around Cat’s bright mainly yellow wardrobe, but obviously she doesn’t mind either. 

This continues for a year. Anne will meet with Cath for lunch every day without exception, but after classes Cat sometimes likes to hang out with her teaching friends. It’s not like Anne hasn’t also made friends in her major, but it stings, and it’s petty- Anne knows it is, but that doesn’t change the fact. 

Speaking of friends in her major, Cat must be fairly dense because at least one of them already knows about her predicament. One of them, Maggie, caught her hacking up full sunflower heads into the theatre's toilet one day before a show, and although Anne was mortified she just sat next to her and rested a hand on her back, a grounding touch even as the flowers were worse than ever. After Anne had finished coughing them up, Maggie had explained she’d had the same problem. When Anne repeated “Had?” Maggie had looked around before unbuttoning her blouse (Anne was very confused for a moment, but then she saw the scar and she understood.) Maggie had asked if she’d ever considered it - the surgery, that is, to make the flowers go away. 

“How could I?” Anne responded. A world where she didn’t love Cat was a world she didn’t want to live in. 

“It’s your roommate right? Catalina?”

Anne nodded, and Maggie sighed, pulling her into a tight hug. Within seconds Anne was sobbing. 

Soon, the two are almost as close as Anne is with Cat, although that can never be beaten. Anne had never met someone with her “problem” - although cases of the Hanahaki Disease were recorded, there is a stigma around it. If you get it because of unrequited love, it must mean there’s something about you to stop your love from loving you back, right?

Through Maggie, who Anne found out ran an unofficial support group regarding Hanahaki, met others like her. Kitty, who had gone through the surgery extremely early in her life, the devastation it was bringing her caused her parents to make the decision for her. When Anne explained why she wasn’t getting the surgery to her, Kitty smiled sadly and said “Yeah, me too.” Kitty didn’t say much about her time with the illness. Nobody made her. 

Anne is also surprised at how many of her fellow theatre kids were in the group. Even the ones who weren’t are aware, something she isn’t used to. She now has an outlet to vent about her problems and a shoulder to cry on, and for a moment she thinks everything may be okay. 

And then Cat comes out to her. 

It’s selfish, of course, to be so devastated by your best friend telling you she’s gay, but even as she celebrates with her best friend Anne feels sick. Some part of her has had this fantasy that maybe the reason Cat doesn’t love her back is just because she’s straight and isn’t attracted to girls, but now that is out of the question. 

Face it, Anne, she tells herself one day in the mirror, You’re just unlovable. 

She tries not to blame Cat for not loving her - she’s entitled to her own preferences, and she’s not obligated to be in love with Anne back, but there’s still that selfish part of her which uses it as an excuse to hate herself even more. 

The Hanahaki gets worse. It gets so much worse. Now, instead of coughing up flowers a few times a week, it is every day without fail. Anne contemplates getting the surgery. She’s bore the pain before, but this is too much. 

“Getting the surgery isn’t ‘giving up’ or ‘taking the easy way out,’” Anne remembers Maggie telling her, “It doesn’t make you any less of a person if you can’t live with the pain.”

She almost does it too. She looks up surgeons, saves her money, has the support of everyone who knows. 

And then Cat stops her. She sees the money, stored away, and completely misreads the sotuation; “You’re not planning on moving out, are you?!”

Anne lets Cat talk her down from “moving out”. It’s easier than telling the truth. She makes up a bullshit excuse of “I just don’t want to get in the way of you bringing people back,” because she knows Cat has always gone to her friends' homes, never the other way round, for this exact reason. Sadly, this has the effect of making Cat apologise for making Anne feel she can’t be around her other friends, and Anne’s heart is so full (so are her lungs) and for a moment she’s happy - Cat does care about her - (the pain is still there) and Anne doesn’t even register the nausea until she has to rush to their shared bathroom and lock the door behind her. 

She retches and retches and retches until the head of the flower comes up, and then the stem, and then the leaves. Not the roots though, because that signals the end. Anne sobs into the toilet bowl, and through her pain-clouded mind she thinks she can hear the door open, but that’s stupid because she locked it. 

Then she hears a gasp, and her first coherent thought is fuck. 

Because she didn’t lock the door, and now Cat is staring at her, horror clear on her stupidly pretty face and her eyes are flicking between Anne and the contents of the toilet, a whole sunflower sans roots. 

She says “Oh, Annie,” and Anne passes out. 

***

When she comes to, she’s in bed. It takes her less than a second after opening her eyes to spot Cat, worried and so close-

“Anne?” That’s not Cat. It takes a moment for Anne’s bleary vision to focus on Maggie, who’s standing behind Cat with an equally concerned look on her face. 

“What?” Anne rasps and she can tell it’s both from the dryness of her throat and the petals she can feel tickling her oesophagus. This is bad. She only felt like this months before her last death. 

Wordlessly, Cat moves in the foreground, and a glass of water appears at her face. Anne pushes herself up, wincing at the shift in the flowers inside her (because this is the phase of her hyper-awareness of them being there. She hates this part.) and takes the glass, knocking it back in less than a minute. Swallowing feels weird now. 

“I didn’t know who to call, but I thought Maggie might know something- Anne.”

Somewhere in the fog that her brain still is, Anne notes that Cat never calls her that, only Annie, but she says nothing. 

“How long have you been in love with me?”

Yet again, fuck. 

“Cat, I-“ Anne starts, but is interrupted by Cats entire body weight pushing down on her. The taller girl crushes her in a hug, and Anne is speechless. 

“Careful, I’ve just drank a pint of water,” is all she can think to say as she gives Maggie an extremely confused look; Why is she hugging me? Is it a pity hug? I thought she’d tell me to fuck off. Seemingly understanding, Maggie shrugs, although Anne knows she knows more than she let on. 

“Anne you fucking idiot, why didn’t you tell me?” Cat says, her face buried in Anne’s neck and her curly hair tickling Anne’s nose. 

“I think that’s pretty obvious, Cat.”

“What, you think just because you’ve convinced yourself I don’t like you means you have to practically kill yourself before you’re 20?”

“I- what?!”

Cat pulls back - she’s practically sitting on Anne and it’s definitely not messing with Anne’s thoughts or anything. “I’ve been doing some research - I saw petals in our bin two weeks ago - and the official definition of Hanahaki is “A disease caused by unrequited love” but that’s bullshit. It happens when someone is convinced their love is unrequited, it doesn’t mean it always is.”

“Sorry to repeat myself, but what?!” Of all the things Anne is being accused of convincing herself of right now, she’s pretty damn convinced this isn’t real. She hit her head on the toilet bowl and this is a fever dream. She’s going to wake up to polite yet devastating rejection and then she’s going to die. Again. 

“Annie, you might have convinced yourself I was too high up for you last time, but there’s no way you still think that.”

Maggie interjects, “Catalina, maybe slow down? I think her brain is fried.”

Cat sighs - when she puts her mind to something, she goes all in - and makes eye contact with Anne, which is very distracting.

“Anne. I remember last time. I have remembered it my entire life. I held off from saying anything because I thought you didn’t know. Are you still with me?”

Anne nods, even though she doesn’t think she is at all. 

“I have been in love with you since the 1520s.”

Anne cautions a panicked look at Maggie, who quips “Reincarnation is hardly the weirdest thing I’ve seen,” but Cat practically commands her attention. For the first time possibly since Catherine’s divorce, Anne sees how regal Cat can be. Even when Cat is straddling her in a cramped university dorm. 

“Anne, don’t pass out again.”

“Are you telling me these fucking sunflowers have been killing me for no goddamn reason?”

Cat scoffs - “is that what you’re focusing on?”

“It’s a lot to take in!”

“Annie.”

“Yes?”

“I would very much like to kiss you.”

“I- Shit, okay.”

And then she does. And it is everything Anne has dreamed of. So much so, in fact, that she barely feels the shrinking in her lungs. She still does, though, and has to repress a shudder. She fails, and Cat pulls back with a look of concern. Her lipstick is slightly smudged. Anne thinks it’s a good look on her. 

“Are you okay?”

“Cat, I am more than okay. I think the flowers are gone.”

“That soon?”

“I don’t know what the norm is, I don’t think this happens all too often.” At this, Anne is tired of talking, and she leans back in to kiss Cat again. Cat has no qualms with this until she suddenly pulls back with a start. 

Maggie is gone, and they both breathe a sigh of relief. There is a text on Anne’s phone, however, that simply reads “Gross”. 

Anne stifles a laugh, and so does Cat when she reads it over her shoulder, her arms around Anne’s waist. Something catches Anne’s eye as she looks up from her phone, though.

The sunflower, the one she had coughed up into the toilet, was on the table. 

She looks at Cat in confusion and the taller girl shrugs. 

“I couldn’t flush it, and you were - are more important.”

“Do you think we can bury it?”

“Seeing as it’s a cut stem, I don’t think it’ll grow Anne.”

“No, like, bury it. Not plant it, just get rid of it.”

They do, after a while. Anne finds it funny that it feels like a funeral, a toast to the death of her old self, she says with a laugh. She’s still in shock, though, as Cat slips her hand in Anne’s and tugs her away. 

Yeah, maybe things are going to be okay, Anne thinks, and this time she means it.


End file.
